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Help Me! I Lost My Funny!

Eons ago, I flicked on the tv in the den and there was George Carlin, already famous for his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV.” This must’ve been in the early 1970’s.

Mom, seated on the sofa next to me, cried out in shock, “Holy shit! I knew him! We were camp counselors as teenagers. He was the most serious guy I ever met. In fact, that was the last time I saw him because he landed a radio job.”

She could never get over that he was funny. Each time she saw him on tv, she’d shake her head with that “who knew?” look.

George Carlin was another defining force in my life. Hell, I grew up with the family tradition and vocation of funny and soft humor as well as satire through Punch and Judy, Charlie Hebdo, le Canard Enchaine and National Lampoon. In my family, the competition was fierce as to who was the funniest. Each. Day.

And you wonder why I ended up a commercial banker?

Today, I recall George Carlin’s last monologue, in particular, how it doesn’t take much to end civilization as we know it in three days:

I always hope that no matter how small the original problem is, it’s going to grow into bigger and bigger proportions and get completely out of control. And I’ll give you a concrete example. Let’s say a water main breaks in downtown Los Angeles, and it floods an electrical substation, knocking out all the traffic lights and tying up the entire city, and emergency vehicles can’t get through. And at the same time, one of those month-long global warming heat waves comes along, but there’s no air-conditioning, there’s no water for sanitation, so cholera, smallpox and dysentery break out and thousands of people start dying in the streets. But before they die, parasites eat their brains, and they go completely fucking crazy, and they storm the hospital, but the hospital can’t handle all the casualties, so these people rape all the nurses and set the hospital on fire. And the flames drive them even crazier, so they start stabbing social workers and garbage men. And a big wind comes along, and the entire city goes up in flames. And the people who are still healthy, they get mad at the sick people, and they start crucifying them, nailing them to crosses, trying on their underwear, shit like that. Then everybody smokes crack and PCP, and they march on city hall, where they burn the mayor at the stake, they strangle his wife, and take turns sodomizing the statue of Larry Flynt.

And at this point, it looks like pretty soon things are gonna start to get out of control.

Doesn’t this sound pretty much like certain communities dominating Europe right now? Like the Muslim suburbs of Paris, Norway, Sweden, Italy, UK and Belgium?

Isn’t this what the current American administration is attempting to foment by creating civil unrest between blacks and whites?

At least people are waking up, albeit groggy, on a global basis.

This is why I endorse E. T. Williams. He has lots to say and he is right - it’s all about common sense. As my mom used to say, “Like attracts like,” and E. T. is another proponent of, “The Emperor is Nekkid” satire. Like yours truly.

Insofar as my humor, it’s taking a station break. I’m still sitting shiva for Georges Wolinski, one of several cartoonists murdered in Paris, a man who appealed to my aesthetics since I was a teenager with his mixture of the profane with the humdrum, sex with humor, politics with common sense. He’s a luminary in the world of satire, a world I entered in 2010, a world of which I’m proud to be considered a part.

I just hope that George Carlin’s quote about society’s failures, “Nobody seems to notice and nobody seems to care,” is rendered invalid soon.